Service providers/operators typically provide numerous voice and/or data services to subscribers using wireline and/or wireless communications networks. Examples of such services include cellular telephony, access to the Internet, gaming, broadcasting or multicasting of audio, video, and multimedia programming, etc. User equipment such as cell phones, personal data assistants, smart phones, text messaging devices, global positioning system (“GPS”) devices, network interface cards, notebook computers, and desktop computers, may access the services provided by the communications networks over an air interface with one or more base stations.
Operators or “service providers” use offline and online charging functions to keep track of the charges incurred by each device for using the various services. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”/“3GPP2”) standards groups have defined a set of specifications that may be used to implement online charging systems and offline charging systems to cover charging in the various network domains (e.g., a circuit switching network domain, a packet switching network domain, and/or a wireless domain), IP multimedia subsystems (“IMS”), and emerging 3G/OMA application services.
Subscribers of telecommunications services, such as cellular voice and data subscriptions, typically pay a monthly fee for services that often include allowances. For example, a monthly allowance for a number of minutes, a number of Short Message Service (“SMS”) texts, gigabytes of data, etc. However, service providers, particularly in the telecommunications domain, are increasingly interested in offering subscription periods that are significantly shorter than a month in order to better manage subscriber spending patterns and to address a customer segment that might not be able to afford paying a month at a time.